Call on HUD to reinstate Affirmatively Further Fair Housing rule

In the wake of the Trump administration moving to delay an Obama-era fair housing rule, prominent Democrats like former Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro and Rep. Maxine Waters, the ranking member of the House Committee on Financial Services, spoke out against the move.

Late last week, a group of 76 civil rights, housing, and community development organizations issued a joint statement, calling on HUD to allow the AFFH rule to move forward as originally stipulated.

The rule, which was announced in 2015, requires cities and towns that receive federal funding to examine their local housing patterns for racial bias and to design a plan to address any measurable bias.

But, last week, HUD announced that it was delaying the delaying the deadline for local governments to submit their fair housing evaluations by one year.

In a statement, the community groups say that the delaying the rule by one year is tantamount to repealing the rule altogether.

“Without warning, HUD has decided effectively to suspend the regulation, leaving local jurisdictions confused, giving local residents less voice in important decisions about their communities, and reinstating an approach to fair housing that the Government Accountability Office found to be ineffective and poorly administered,” the groups say.

The groups also call HUD’s decision “short-sighted” and ask HUD to reverse its decision.

“The administration’s abrupt decision to effectively suspend this critical regulation is misguided,” Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said.

“The federal government, states and local communities have been required by law since 1968 to work to undo the segregated communities that federal housing policy created in the first place,” Yentel continued. “Suspending the tools that help communities meet that obligation, without any input from key stakeholders, is a step in the wrong direction.”

The groups say that the Obama administration designed the AFFH rule with “considerable public input” but that the Trump administration did the opposite when delaying the rule.

HUD, in is announcement, disagreed with that assessment.

“Early in this administration, HUD embarked upon a top-to-bottom review of the department’s rules and regulations. As part of this regulatory review, HUD asked the public to offer comment on those rules that might be excessively burdensome or unclear,” HUD’s announcement stated.

“What we heard convinced us that the Assessment of Fair Housing tool for local governments wasn’t working well,” HUD continued. “In fact, more than a third of our early submitters failed to produce an acceptable assessment—not for lack of trying but because the tool designed to help them to succeed wasn’t helpful.”

The groups also suggest that impact of delaying the rule will be significant.

“The obligation of local governments to ‘affirmatively further fair housing’ is essential to fulfilling the promises of the Fair Housing Act, particularly this year, the 50th anniversary of this key civil rights law,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “HUD’s proposed suspension would roll back one of the law’s most critical tools to correct structural inequality and racial segregation and represents yet another attack by this Administration on communities of color across the country.”

Shanna Smith, the president and CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance, said that delaying the AFFH rule will only have negative effects.

“Americans strongly believe that a zip code should not determine a child’s future and that everyone – regardless of their race or national origin, the language they speak, or whether they have children or have a disability – should have access to the opportunities they need to succeed,” Smith said. “But we are falling short of achieving that goal. Actions taken over many years by HUD, other government agencies and the private sector have left us more segregated than we were 100 years ago. That has led to concentrated poverty and weaker communities and undermines our prosperity. We need HUD to enforce this important rule, not suspend it.”

The groups conclude by calling on HUD to reconsider and allow the AFFH rule to proceed.

“HUD’s announcement today is a serious loss for fair housing and puts the promise of making every neighborhood a community of opportunity further out of reach,” the groups say. “We call on HUD to reverse its decision, withdraw this notice, and move ahead with implementation and enforcement of this important fair housing rule. And we call on Congress to provide policy and budgetary oversight of HUD to ensure it is delivering on the promise of fair and equitable housing.”

Ben Lane is the Senior Financial Reporter for HousingWire. In this role, he helps set a leading pace for news coverage spanning the issues driving the U.S. housing economy. Previously, he worked for TownSquareBuzz, a hyper-local news service. He is a graduate of University of North Texas.

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